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THE 



EXPEDIENCY OF PREACHING 



AGAINST THE 



AMUSEMENTS OF THE WORLD, 



CONSIDERED IN A 



LETTER TO A CLERICAL FRIEND. 



THE REV. HENRY WOODWARD, A.M. 

« t 
FORMERLY OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD. 

RECTOR OF FETHARD, IN THE DIOCESS OF CASHEL. 



LONDON: 
DUNCAN AND MALCOLM, 

37 PATERNOSTER ROW. 



M.DCCC.XLI. 






Thb Library 
of Congress 

WASHINGTON 



LONDON: 

PRINTED BY MOVES AND BARCLAY, CASTLE STREET, 
LEICESTER SQUARE. 



A LETTER, 

Sfc. Sfc. 



My Dear, — The subject on which we 

conversed so much at , has engaged 

no small share of my attention since ; and 
so important does it appear to me, on 
the fullest review, to draw the attention 
of the more serious clergy to the point 
in question, that I have resolved to bring 
these lines, addressed to you, before the 
public eye. The matter, then, for con- 
sideration is, Whether it is, or is not, ex- 
pedient to preach directly against what 
are called the amusements of the world ? 
In my judgment, however particular cases 
may perhaps sometimes justify it, as a 
general rule, it is not. 

In the first place, it is, I conceive, the 

B 



2 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

peculiar duty of the Christian pastor, 
rather to influence the mind and incul- 
cate principles, than to regulate the out- 
ward conduct of those committed to his 
care. The Roman Catholic priest is a 
kind of spiritual, indeed I might say 
secular, magistrate in his parish. And 
this is in full keeping with a system, 
whose Head claims authority over all 
the civil polities and reigning potentates 
of the earth. But far different are the 
vocation and the mission of the reformed 
pastor. His business is with the souls 
of men. He acts as the delegate of One 
whose kingdom was not of this world ; and 
who said to him who called for his tem- 
poral interference, "Man, who made me a 
judge or a divider over you V 9 The grand 
object of the Christian minister should 
be, to point out to his people that name 
by which alone they can be saved — to 
lead his flock into the green pastures of 
righteousness/peace, and joy in the Holy 
Ghost — to guide their footsteps to the 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 6 

fountain of living water, even to the 
spiritual apprehension of the only true 
God, whom to know is the dawn of ever- 
lasting day. His ceaseless labour should 
be, to write upon their hearts the first 
and grand commandment, the love of 
God, with all the powers and capacities 
of their higher nature — to draw the 
image of a Saviour upon those souls 
which He has purchased with his own 
blood — to raise them to a state of real, 
not notional salvation, deliverance from 
the misery of sin, and enfranchisement 
from the slavery of vice — to take them 
out of the horrible pit and out of the 
miry clay, and let them breathe the open 
air, and exult in the liberty of that open 
daylight in which the pure in heart see 
God. This is the errand on which the 
Gospel messengers are sent. They are 
not commissioned as " rulers of the dark- 
ness of this world," to regulate the con- 
duct, and direct the movements of those 
who will not have Christ to reign over 



4< ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

them. They are to go into the high- 
ways and hedges ; not to teach men how 
to live a lawless life there, but to compel 
them, by every gentle violence, to come 
in and join the wedding guests. They 
are sent after the lost sheep in the 
wilderness, not to point out to them 
some spots of verdure upon the weary 
waste, but to invite them to return to 
the true pasture, and to the Shepherd 
and Bishop of their souls. 

" Would I describe a preacher such as Paul, 
Were he on earth, would hear, approve, and own, 
Paul should himself direct me. I would trace 
His master strokes, and draw from his design. " 

Such is the language of the poet ; but 
need we confine this subject to preach- 
ing only ? Can we look, under Christ, 
to a higher authority than this great 
apostle, for the character of our whole 
ministry ? " All things," then, says he, 
" are of God, who hath reconciled us to 
himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 5 

to us the ministry of reconciliation ; to 
wit, that God was in Christ reconciling 
the world to himself, not imputing their 
trespasses unto them ; and hath com- 
mitted unto us the word of reconcilia- 
tion. Now, then, we are ambassadors 
for Christ, as though God did beseech 
you by us : we pray you in Christ's 
stead, be ye reconciled to God." Let 
this point once be carried, and all the 
details of conduct will fall into their 
right place : the mind will be full of 
light, and become a law to itself: and 
that gracious promise will be as abun- 
dantly fulfilled in moral guidance, as it 
is in temporal provision, " Seek ye first 
the kingdom of God, and his righteous- 
ness, and all these things shall be added 
unto you." 

I do not mean to say, however, that 
a clergyman is to decline all interference 
with the actions of his parishioners, or 
on. principle to keep himself altogether 
aloof from their concerns in the conduct 



6 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS, 

and government of their lives. There 
may be many occasions on which it 
would be theorizing away plain and 
practical duty, to abstain from rebuking 
the erring members of his flock " with 
all authority ; " or from taking an active 
interest in the external habits and con- 
versation of those committed to his 
charge. But this I will say, that the 
more he addresses himself, in his pas- 
toral visits, as well as public ministra- 
tions, to the inculcation of the one grand 
principle, that religion is the life of God 
in the soul of man; and the less he 
suffers himself to be drawn to lay down 
rules and regulations for outward con- 
duct, the more simple will be his task; 
the more powerful will be his influence ; 
the more calculated will be his ministry 
to wear well, and to gain ground and im- 
prove by time, in whatever field of duty 
the Lord has thought fit to place him. 
I am convinced that, even in the case of 
those who are living in positive and 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 7 

wilful sin, it is often better that the 
minister should be ignorant of so melan- 
choly a fact. The sinner will not then 
be led to fly his presence ; nor will that 
mutual restraint and awkwardness be 
felt, which the one party's being informed 
of the unhappy secret of the other must 
necessarily occasion. The sense that 
character is not lost will place the de- 
linquent at his ease. He will feel as- 
sured that no personal allusions can be 
meant : all occasion of offence will then 
be absent ; and thus his pastor's counsels 
may be blessed to the aw r akening of his 
conscience, and to the salvation of his 
soul. It will generally be found that 
a clergyman's taking upon him to regu- 
late the outward conduct of his parish- 
ioners will secularize his intercourse, and 
involve him in endless intricacies. His 
visits will be consumed in discussing 
family concerns ; and he will be called 
upon to hear how one member of the 
household has acted towards another— 



8 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

both having perhaps contradictory state- 
ments to make, and demanding, as a 
matter of justice, that they should tell 
their stories at full length. In all pro- 
bability, pecuniary concerns will occupy 
no small share of a minister's attention 
who interposes in such details ; and thus, 
as I have often known, all spiritual con- 
siderations will be lost in the complex- 
ities of worldly business ; and the pastor's 
visits will be looked upon, not as a kind 
of Sabbath hour, when the weary spirit 
and burdened heart are for a while to 
breathe a freer atmosphere and purer 
air, but as an opportunity of opening 
out the whole budget of earthly anxieties 
and cares. 

Many things in the course of life, in a 
moral point of view, are such as a wise 
authority would desire neither, on the 
one hand, to sanction, nor on the other 
hand to forbid. And may not this be 
one reason, and that intelligible to us, 
why God is withdrawn from, and in- 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 9 

visible to, the agents or actors in the 
present scene of things ? Much may 
conduce to the working out the destined 
product of this wondrous plan, to deve- 
lop individual energies to their fullest 
extent, and to impress upon society the 
best character it is capable of receiving ; 
which, nevertheless, God could not judi- 
cially approve without compromising His 
holiness, — nor authoritatively condemn 
without an injurious restraint on human 
liberty ; and thus He winks, as the 
Apostle expresses it, at what His Pro- 
vidence permits to take its course upon 
this chequered field. The same is the 
case with all wise and considerate pa- 
rents. To have their children continu- 
ally before them, and for ever under 
their eye, would effectually check the 
full expansion of their minds. Many a 
freedom, which it would be harsh to 
condemn as wrong, may nevertheless be 
of such a character, that it would be 
scarce consistent with the high standard 

b 2 



10 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

of the Gospel to pronounce it right. 
There may be, and I believe there are, 
some young persons, early saints and 
special gifts of heaven, to whom these 
observations will not apply ; but sure I 
am, that the far greater part, even of 
hopeful children, could put forth no 
healthful shoots, — could develop neither 
energy of thought, nor depth of feeling, 
nor force of character, if, during the 
whole refining process, a parent stood 
by, or a preceptor was at hand, to con- 
demn or approve every early sally, — ■ 
every excursive movement of the youth- 
ful spirits. All that I have been saying 
applies, in my opinion, with peculiar 
force, to official interference on the part 
of a parochial minister with the amuse- 
ments of the world. In the first place, 
it involves him in endless intricacies. If 
not contented with the infusion of regu- 
lating and corrective principles, he must 
needs legislate in a matter thus of vari- 
ous shades and infinite gradations, where 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 11 

is he to begin, to end, or to draw the 
line ? Down from the opera and the 
masquerade to battle-door and shuttle- 
cock, and whipping of a top ; down from 
the independent individual who takes the 
most active lead in fashionable frivolities, 
to the member of a family who occasion- 
ally and reluctantly complies, and taking 
in all the possible combinations of cir- 
cumstances that may arise to complicate 
each case ; — a whole life might be spent 
in drilling the ranks, and regulating the 
movements of a large parish, thus thrown 
for direction upon his shoulders. And 
besides this, he must, as I have just now 
anticipated, either at once lay his veto 
upon a thousand things, without which 
young persons, not seriously and affec- 
tionately religious, will be discouraged, 
become spiritless, and droop ; or give a 
solemn sanction to many, at least, doubt- 
ful trifles, which it would be far better 
for a minister not to seem to notice than 
authoritatively to approve. But my sub- 



12 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

ject leads me to speak more particularly 
of pulpit ministrations ; and to consider 
how far it is, or is not, judicious to 
preach pointedly against the amusements 
of the world. 

I think, then, that publicly denouncing 
these pursuits, and drawing all eyes on 
those who partake of them, is calculated 
to divide a congregation, as it were, into 
two parties ; to identify the clergyman 
with one, and to place him in an attitude 
apparently adverse to the other, while 
the line of demarcation by no means 
secures a right or equitable division. I 
know many individuals, particularly of 
the middle classes, who oppose the 
things in question, with an acrimony 
which is far worse than the levities 
they condemn ; and I am convinced, 
that if such persons were acquainted 
with their own hearts, they would per- 
ceive that much of the sharpness arises 
from a jealousy of the upper ranks, and 
from being mortified at their own exclu- 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 13 

sion from the envied brilliancies of higher 
life. Besides, there are not a few who, 
from mere circumstances, from the pre- 
judice of education, or from being told 
by some popular leader that amusements 
are inconsistent with a strict profession, 
abstain from such pursuits, and yet who 
have no devotional taste, no enlightened 
apprehension of the real evils they in- 
volve. Such persons, it is true, renounce 
the card-table, theatre, and ball-room — 
but they supply their place with every 
silly levity which is not in the list of the 
proscribed diversions. Like those who 
abstain from flesh, and then dress up 
their fish with every stimulating accom- 
paniment and piquant sauce, which may, 
if possible, surpass the forbidden aliment 
in richness and in flavour ; — these re- 
nounces of amusements seem to put 
invention on the rack to find out substi- 
tutes; and eagerly catch at every frivolity 
and every accommodation to the spirit of 
the world which they do not find written 



14 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

in the Index Expurgatorius. It is dis- 
tressing to the last degree to see the 
strange inconsistencies of many who 
seem to consider withdrawal from cer- 
tain fashionable assemblies the one thing 
needful, the differentia essentialis of the 
Christian life. Amongst these are per- 
sons who have no idea of putting a bridle 
upon the tongue, but give full unfettered 
swing to that unruly member, in both its 
offices, — that of talking, and that of tast- 
ing, — who never think of such a thing as 
self-denial, self-government, self-know- 
ledge, or self-possession; who set no bounds 
to false accusations and censorious judg- 
ments ; who are utterly reckless of do- 
mestic duties, of the well -ordering of 
their families, and of all the nameless 
charities of home ; — such I do, from 
positive knowledge and with real sorrow, 
declare are not unfrequently amongst the 
number of that interior circle whom the 
pastor, by raising a fallacious standard 
and drawing an erroneous line of separ- 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 15 

ation, gathers round him, as his own 
immediate adherents, and as the sounder 
portion of his flock ; and this he does, 
while their eccentricities and essential 
levities actually frighten many a mother 
who belongs to the other class, from 
suffering her daughters to make a strict 
profession, lest they should be infected 
with the wildness, and extravagancies, 
and improprieties of these religious 
mountebanks ; — yes, I am persuaded, 
that amongst those who, however mis- 
takenly, think it a duty to their position 
in society, not wholly to withdraw from 
public amusements, (and who, I will add, 
are confirmed in that opinion by the re- 
volting exhibitions just now alluded to,) 
are some who are not far from the king- 
dom of God, — nay, (may we not dare to 
hope ?) who are sons and daughters of 
the Lord Almighty. 

It is true, that a great change has of 
late years taken place in the upper orders 
of society ; and that conformity to the 



16 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

world in these particulars is not so gene- 
ral as in former days ; and this certainly 
places the Christian (if there be such), 
who still frequents the theatre and the 
ball-room, in a different position from 
that in which his father stood. For now 
the serious character who is present at 
such scenes, doubtless goes against the 
stream of the opinion, and current of the 
practice, of the religious body ; — whereas, 
in bygone years, he had both with him. In 
times which I can well remember, it never 
perhaps occurred to the strictest saints 
— for many I am sure there were — who 
appeared in the midst of scenes of levity, 
that they were wrong in being there. They 
felt it to be their cross, — a painful neces- 
sity which they could not avoid, — a duty 
to society and to their families, which it 
would be a culpable self-indulgence to 
decline, — in such a spirit many conformed 
outwardly to the world ; — but, whatever 
other trials sinful flesh and blood were in 
their case, as is common to man, daily 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 17 

subject to, the brilliancies of life were 
any thing but attractive in their eyes. 
Trials they were, but not of the seductive 
kind ; they were trials of their patience ; 
they put to proof how far their charity 
could cover the multitude of sins ; they 
tested and measured the degree to which 
they had learned to deny themselves, 
and to subordinate their own wills and 
fondest inclinations to the will of God. In 
a spirit of lesser martyrdom, many thus 
mingled with the thoughtless crowd, — 
and never did they cling more closely to 
the cross of Christ than when He appeared 
thus crucified afresh, and put to an open 
shame. No man could doubt this truth, 
whose memory can carry him back some 
thirty or forty years, and who then occu- 
pied a favourable post for observation. 
But if any one, from want of such oppor- 
tunity, will question the actual existence 
of these facts, he cannot at least, from 
the nature of the case, argue against the 



18 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

possibility of their occurrence. No man 
who understands his position as a Christ- 
ian soldier, can be thus ignorant of his 
spiritual warfare. It is quite clear, that 
if any person is once persuaded that his 
duty requires of him to be present in 
scenes, however vicious and abandoned, 
that presence implies no participation in 
the guilt, nor misprision of the treason. 
But if it be said, " How can a Christian 
conceive it to be his duty to mingle in 
pursuits, and consort with persons, so 
opposed to every sentiment of his heart T 
I would ask in reply, Did not the All- 
perfect pattern of purity and holiness eat 
and drink with publicans and sinners ? 
Did He not, in His great intercessory 
prayer, thus supplicate His Eternal Father, 
" I pray not that thou shouldest take 
them out of the world, but that thou 
shouldest keep them from the evil?" 
Did He not say to those who would have 
separated at once the precious from the 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 19 

vile, " Nay, lest while ye gather up the 
tares, ye root up also the wheat with 
them?" 

The fact is, that life is altogether, with 
a few green spots and friendly resting- 
places upon its surface, a field of hostility 
to the Christian spirit. Duty and danger 
are closely linked together. Those who 
would reclaim the wretched outcast, and 
bring him back in safety to his Father's 
house, must venture into regions far from 
God. Those who would pluck brands 
out of the burning, must dare to plunge 
into the midst of the fires themselves. But 
not to speak of the higher achievements 
of the Christian soldier, and of his assaults 
upon the very citadel of the foe; his 
daily life is the constant practice of out- 
wardly conforming to habits, mingling by 
his presence in scenes, and freely con- 
versing with persons, whose contact, if 
sympathetic, would be injurious. Such 
is the field of battle on which it has been 
the will of God to place us. And out of 



20 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS, 

this scene of trial and of peril there is no 
extrication of an outward kind. We 
must live, and move, and have our being, 
in this cloudy atmosphere and infectious 
air. Nor is this arrangement, mysterious 
and startling as it may appear to some, 
without a plan and a purpose, which in- 
telligibly and triumphantly vindicate the 
ways of God to the divinely instructed 
mind. It calls us to exercise the whole 
family of Christian graces. It is the 
food on which patience, fortitude, fidelity, 
temperance, and watchfulness are fed. 
It is the grand material and means by 
which the soul works out its own salva- 
tion. It makes provision, by its present 
weight and pressure, for that still more 
glorious expansion which the unfettered 
spirit will one day feel. It shuts up 
every avenue of escape from the pollu- 
tions which encircle us, save that one 
ascending channel by which the soul flies 
up in prayer and supplication unto God. 
It thus drives us to that inward separa- 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 21 

tion from the things of earth, that spiritual 
coming out from the world, renouncing 
all her vanities, and forsaking all her 
idols, which constitute us true and living 
members of Christ's mystical body, child- 
ren of the light and of the day, even of 
that everlasting day whose morning star 
has risen already upon the heart. In 
this sense, " to the pure all things are 
pure;" and where sin abounds, " grace 
doth much more abound." On such 
grounds, then, I rest my conviction, that 
those who, in former times, frequented 
public places, " not doing their own ways, 
nor finding their own pleasure," but sub- 
mitting to a painful and imperious neces- 
sity, might have not only passed through 
the flames unhurt, but come forth " even 
as the silver, which from the earth is 
tried, and purified seven times in the 
fire." 

I am well aware, as I have already 
intimated, of the change of the times. I 
know how powerful a stand has been 



22 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

made against systematized follies, which 
were once considered as much out of the 
reach of man's control as the motion of 
the planets. Formerly there seemed to 
be no alternative, no power of choosing. 
There was but one system, and that took 
in all. Fellow-soldiers of the cross, those 
who were inwardly dead to temporal 
vanities, met in the same scenes of public 
dissipation, as they now do in the same 
world that " lieth in wickedness ;" they 
sighed and cried for all the abominations 
that were done in the midst thereof; 
they cheered one another with mutual 
sympathy, and sanctioned by their pre- 
sence such an unavoidable conformity to 
universal custom. Now it may, at least, 
be said, that many, nay the vast majority 
of those possessing godliness, are absent 
from these assemblies. And surely the 
few stragglers from the fold, when they 
look round upon the moral waste, cannot 
but be struck with the significant fact, 
that none of the flock, beside themselves, 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 23 

have ventured there. This alibi must 
form an awful blank to them. Can all 
the revelry of the scene stifle the still 
small voice which whispers in each breast, 
" ' Where are the nine?' nay, where are 
the ninety and nine ? Are they still 
following their faithful Shepherd ? Is He 
still feeding them, and leading them to 
living fountains of water? And have I 
alone, out of the hundred sheep, wan- 
dered into this land of strangers ? " 

Still, important as has been the revo- 
lution in society, I should scruple to say 
that none so far retain the impressions of 
a former period as to frequent the ordi- 
nary scenes of dissipation, on the prin- 
ciple of conscientious obligation which 
then prevailed. There are some few in- 
dividuals of every generation who seem, 
as it were, the representatives of a former 
age. Like stones which are left pro- 
jecting from the extremity of a range of 
building, that they may serve to bind 
the new and the old together, should 



24 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

any further additions be constructed ; — 
so these specimens of past days seemed 
formed of such unmalleable materials, 
that they may preserve the continuity of 
society ; that one century may run into 
another, and the world go gradually on, 
without such sudden breaks and abrupt 
transitions as might convulse the whole 
machine, or, at all events, be like putting 
a piece of new cloth on an old garment, 
or new wine into old bottles. That such 
anomalies do, in some rare instances, 
still exist, and appear in the gayest as- 
semblies as if awoke from a sleep of 
some fifty years, I believe, however 
strange, to be the fact. And if so, these 
persons act, in this particular, as they 
do in many others, from a comical ri- 
gidity, rather than from any laxity of 
principle. 

However this may be, persuaded I am 
that the theatre and ball-room contain 
numbers whom any thing but inclination 
has led to mingle with the mass. — 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS* 25 

Mothers, who cannot restrain, and who 
consequently think it better to accom- 
pary, their daughters, than to send them 
adrift upon the world without their na- 
tural protectors. And daughters who 
are, to the shame and scandal of their 
parents, driven like sheep to the slaughter 
into scenes which they instinctively abhor. 
That these latter are not culpable in 
yielding to such abused authority, will, 
on the whole, I believe, be the verdict of 
every calm and sober judgment. On 
this very point, I was lately told, a young 
lady thus circumstanced asked counsel 
of a clergyman of high character, and 
one thoroughly opposed in principle (need 
I say ?) to the amusements of the world. 
His sentence was — that she should use 
every means but flat disobedience, to 
avoid exposure to such revolting contacts ; 
but that if her parents laid their positive 
commands upon her, her duty was to com- 
ply.' Now, here is a most important admiss- 
ion. Were these amusements to be classed 

c 



26 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

with actual sins, no faithful minister, no 
man of moral principle, could possibly 
have given the advice alluded to. For 
duty to parents can never countervail 
our duty to God. On this point Scrip- 
ture is express and clear. "We ought 
to obey God rather than men/' say the 
apostles, and " He that loveth father or 
mother more than me, is not worthy of 
me," says their Lord and Master. 

Enough has, I trust, been urged upon 
this topic, to shew that some who re- 
nounce the amusements of the world, may 
be far different characters from what a 
Christian minister could approve ; while 
not a few who do frequent them may 
be hopeful members of his congregation ; 
and that consequently, a line of preaching 
which would give too much prominence 
to this distinction, is calculated to throw 
his influence disproportionately into one 
scale, where it would be desirable that he 
should keep a more even balance. In- 
deed, if there were no other motives 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 27 

to restrain a preacher from such direct 
attacks, a consideration of the feelings of 
those who, with pain and reluctance, and 
from a sense of filial duty, are brought into 
public places, might be sufficient to do 
so. Many eyes, perhaps, are turned upon 
those who stand in that trying position. 
They have enough to bear without this 
open shame. They cannot publicly vin- 
dicate themselves, nor explain the reasons 
of their conduct. Nay, respect to their 
parents may close their lips in private. 
They fly for consolation to the sanctuary, 
and for comfort to the instructions of 
their pastor. Let not, then, these stricken 
deer be wounded afresh in the house of 
their friends, and by the hand which 
should be stretched forth to heal them. 
Let them not be reproached before the 
face of the church, for that which is their 
cross, and not their choice ; for that to 
which their necessity, and not their will, 
consents. 

But the case of these is not the only 



28 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

one in which such denunciations from the 
pulpit are injurious, as well as harsh. 
They are calculated either to affront or 
to discourage no small portions of any 
given religious assembly. While the 
pastor applies himself to describe, or even 
to condemn in the strongest terms, states 
and habits of the mind ; to analyze with 
the finest discrimination, and to lay open 
with the most unsparing hand, the secret 
springs of human actions; — those most 
intimately concerned will hear and own 
the strong appeal, and feel that their por- 
trait is drawn to the very life ; while at 
the same time no offence is taken, no re- 
sentment at personality and exposure 
rankles in the breast. But when, before 
an assembled congregation, a man's no- 
torious habits, his modes of life visible to 
all, with which both he and his family are 
known to his whole neighbourhood to be 
identified, when these are made the sub- 
ject of direct attack — when not his con- 
science, but the preacher says, " Thou 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 29 

art the man/' — he feels that an unfair ad- 
vantage has been taken, and that he has 
been individually assailed ; and thus, in 
self-defence, he assumes an attitude of 
hostility to his accuser. Such aggressive 
methods of address present the wrong 
pole of the moral magnet to a large pro- 
portion of the hearers. They repel, and 
do not attract ; they revolt, and do not 
draw. One class they thus provoke to 
enmity. Another, far more interesting 
than those, they discourage and depress. 
They bear too hard upon the timid spirit ; 
they put strong meat before such as 
should be fed with milk ; they often 
break the bruised reed, and quench the 
smoking flax. 

It has sometimes been my lot to see a 
young military man, newly arrived at quar- 
ters in my parish, take his seat amongst 
the members of my congregation. I have 
been led to observe the strict decorum 
of his behaviour ; and the respect he 
seemed to shew to the solemn services of 



SO ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

the church. I have seen that respect 
grow into an intenser interest which, from 
Sabbath to Sabbath, strengthened and in- 
creased. I have felt that the heart of this 
young stranger went with me, while I en- 
deavoured to display the riches of God's 
goodness, in the Gospel of His Son, and 
to describe the blessedness of true re- 
ligion; — how it enlightens the under- 
standing, ennobles the mind, sets the soul 
at liberty, and purifies the heart ; and 
how to be at peace with God gives a man 
a centre, a resting-place, and a home, 
amidst the boisterous elements, the 
changes and ceaseless perturbations of 
this troublesome world. I have w r atched 
the process with unspeakable delight ; 
and have, in some instances, I bless God, 
learned, from more than bare conjecture, 
that a solid and lasting impression had 
been made. Thus have I parted with 
more than one young soldier, with mutual 
'wishes and prayers, that our intercourse, 
in all probability brought to a close for 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 31 

life, might be renewed in brighter scenes, 
and in more durable habitations. Now, 
it is my firm conviction, that if these in- 
dividuals had heard me, in my first ad- 
dresses, railing against the amusements 
of the world, they would have been, if 
not revolted, yet much disheartened; 
that they would have thought religion a 
rigid and impracticable thing ; that they 
would have felt themselves bound at once 
to decide, and that in the faint dawn of 
spiritual life, whether they must alto- 
gether reject religion, or enter upon a 
sea of trials, troubles, and persecutions ; 
and thus, before the Gospel had poured 
its consolations into their hearts, or in- 
fused its pow T er into their souls, that 
they would have been entangled in a 
labyrinth of doubts and scruples, and 
perhaps lost the way that leadeth to 
everlasting life. 

Another evil which arises from thus 
publicly stigmatizing the things in ques- 
tion, is its perversion of that which the 



32 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

Psalmist so graphically describes, — " As 
the eyes of servants look unto the hand 
of their masters, and as the eyes of a 
maiden to the hand of her mistress/' &c. 
It directs their attention to the conduct 
of their superiors, as well as that of chil- 
dren to the habits of their parents, in 
a way, as I conceive, much to be depre- 
cated. To speak first of the latter. 
Many who stand in the parental rela- 
tion, though they may still conform in 
some moderate degree to the accus- 
tomed gaieties of society, are nevertheless 
anxious that their sons and daughters 
should be carefully and religiously brought 
up. They are perhaps, in this respect, 
far more attentive than stricter profes- 
sors often are. They discourage the least 
forwardness or affectation in their child- 
ren. They endeavour to train them in 
habits of simplicity. They take them 
regularly to the house of God ; and see 
well that their deportment there befits 
the solemn services of the place. All 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 33 

this they are conscientiously solicitous to 
effect; and sometimes, too, with admir- 
able success. For such are the myste- 
rious ways of Providence, that parents 
like these not unfrequently lay in their 
children's minds the foundation of a far 
stricter profession than they themselves 
maintain ; while others who personally 
" live after the straitest sect of our re- 
ligion," by some strange mismanagement 
contrive to impart such principles to their 
offspring, as when they look to their do- 
mestic vineyard for grapes, bring forth 
wild grapes. If it be true then, that the 
former often succeed in the work of edu- 
cation ; and if it be true moreover, that 
the great secret of this success is the 
respect which these children are taught 
to shew their parents, and the manner in 
which the first commandment with pro- 
mise is early impressed upon their minds; 
— can it be desirable, or right, or fitting, 
that such children should sit and hear 
their father's and their mother's conduct 

c2 



34 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

dragged forth to view, that it may be 
marked for public reprobation ? Can 
it but be calculated to set either the 
child against the parent, or the lamb 
against the shepherd of the flock ? And 
can any thing be more deplorable than 
the one or than the other ? It is idle 
to say in answer, that if a parent does 
wrong, it is the more necessary to warn 
his child against it. This sounds well 
— but it is mere vague and general truth, 
and only beats the air. It does not 
apply (and no man of common sense 
will say it does) to the case before us. 
Children at an early age come in no 
contact with these habits of their parents. 
They are put to bed before the ball or 
the rout begins. And it is the anxious 
desire of such persons as I have described, 
to keep all vanity and every thing arti- 
ficial from their children's minds. These 
latter are aware, we will allow, that their 
parents go occasionally, and from time 
to time, to public assemblies — but of 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 35 

these assemblies they know nothing but 
the name. They are told moreover, 
that their parents frequent them, be- 
cause they think it right. And what 
great harm can such vague impressions 
do them? While, on the other hand, 
what harm may it not do them, to hear 
their parents, their natural guides and 
providential instructors, denounced by 
the minister of their religion, as hollow 
professors, and " lovers of pleasures more 
than lovers of God?" Can the effect of 
this be salutary or good ? Can it be any 
other, I repeat it, than that children 
should consider that system which can 
thus assail the character, and wound the 
feelings of their parents, as tyrannical 
and hateful ; — or that they should hence- 
forth refuse an ear to that precept so full 
of blessing — "My son, hear the instruc- 
tion of thy father, and forsake not the 
law of thy mother : for they shall be an 
Ornament of grace unto thy head, and 
chains about thy neck?" 



36 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

The same applies in all its force, to 
the case of servants. Many a mistress 
who, from inveterate custom, or from a 
mistaken sense of duty, partakes, though 
rarely perhaps, of the amusements of the 
world, nevertheless " looketh well to the 
ways of her household." She assembles 
them daily to prayer,— she supplies them 
with copies of the Scripture, — she dis- 
courages all levities amongst her ser- 
vants; and in every instance, the above 
alone excepted, is a pattern to her family 
of order, regularity, and decorum. Now, 
suppose the domestics in such a family 
are told, as they often are, that the large 
and jolly meetings held in many instances 
by servants, would be hurtful and dan- 
gerous for them, but that the assemblies 
of the higher orders are necessary ap- 
pendages to their stations, and should 
on that account be conformed to. Let 
this be ever so fallacious, yet what harm 
would it do a servant to believe it ? On 
the other hand, what mischief might it 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 37 

occasion to a young footman, to hear 
such a mistress arraigned as a sinner 
against her own soul, and a rebel to her 
God! Is it well for him to perceive 
that she and his minister are thus point- 
edly at issue, and that if the latter be in 
the right, all the advice he has received 
at home has reached him through a pol- 
luted channel; that " there is death in 
the pot/' and all its contents are but 
specious poison ? New light has reached 
his mind ; and to all the counsels which 
he had heard with reverence, he can 
now say, " Thou that teachest another, 
teachest thou not thyself?" Thus, the 
only providential check, perhaps, to law- 
less passion is removed : he has lost his 
confidence in his former guide, and now 
is ready to take whatever path lies open, 
and seems most inviting to his unbridled 
appetites. All this supposes him to side 
in the controversy with the accusing 
party. But if not, then loyalty to his 
mistress will indispose his mind to pas- 



38 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

toral instruction, and stop his ears to 
the charmer's advice, charm he never 
so wisely. His minister's exhortations 
will henceforth be thrown away on him. 
In vain will the pastor " speak forth the 
words of truth and soberness," — in vain 
will he urge the mildest motives of the 
Gospel, and press the invitations of a 
Saviour's love ; they are all but empty 
sounds to one who sees in the preacher 
the accuser and the maligner of his kind 
protector and his friend. 

Strong as these terms may appear to 
many, I am persuaded they do not ex- 
ceed the fair probabilities of the case. 
But let us imagine to ourselves a case 
of a different kind — where the parties 
are members indeed of the same family, 
but on an equal footing with, and inde- 
pendent of, each other. Let us suppose 
a number of brothers and sisters, — some 
of whom are in the highest form of the 
school of Christ, dead to things below, 
and separate from the vanities of earth, 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 39 

— while others, though faithful to a 
lower light, are still more or less in 
bondage to the world, in captivity to 
man, and frequenters of those scenes 
which form the subject of this letter. 
Let us then suppose this interesting 
group to go together to a Sabbath's 
service in the house of God. Let us 
suppose the minister to be one highly 
gifted for his office ; well qualified to 
engage attention, and fitted to impress 
the heart. Let us suppose him to ascend 
the pulpit, and thence to deliver a dis- 
course full of humility, of unaffected 
earnestness, and genuine tenderness. No 
asperity, no bitterness, nothing that could 
be construed into harshness towards the 
chief of sinners, disturbs the gentle 
stream of love that flows from his heart, 
and descends from his lips, like rain upon 
the tender herb, and showers upon the 
grass. The highest standard of pure and 
undefiled religion is presented to the 
view; — but it is lifted up, like the anti- 



40 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

typical serpent, to draw all men unto it. 
Holiness and love are the themes on 
which it is his delight to dwell. Holi- 
ness, because it is identical with happi- 
ness — with that happiness of which it is 
his heart's desire that all should be par- 
takers ; and love, because " love is of 
God; and he that dwelleth in love 
dwelleth in God and God in him." 

From such a discourse, so calculated 
to conciliate the affections, and to win 
the heart, we may well conceive in what 
state of mind this party would be likely 
to withdraw. The man of God had 
" preached peace to them which were 
afar off/' as well as " to them that were 
nigh." He had delivered his message 
untainted with human mixtures. He 
had spoken according to the mind of 
that God who says, that " when a man's 
ways please the Lord, he maketh even 
his enemies to be at peace with him." 
Could any moment then be more favour- 
able for the stricter and holier portion of 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 41 

this little circle to make impression upon 
the hearts and consciences of the other ? 
As the disciples at Emmaus " said one to 
another, Did not our heart burn within 
us, while he talked with us by the way, 
and while he opened to us the Scrip- 
tures ?" — so might these refer to the mild 
and Christian instructions which they 
had all been hearing. They might seize 
the occasion to inquire, not triumphantly, 
but as if all were equally concerned, 
whether the world could thus sooth the 
perturbations of the heart, tranquillise 
the mind, satisfy the wants and fill the 
capacities of the soul. They might ask, 
in the same spirit, whether its boasted 
enjoyments were like that well of water 
which they had heard described, and 
which springeth up into everlasting life ; 
whether its pleasures were not, at their 
highest pitch, but broken cisterns that 
can hold no water. Such are the sweet 
counsels which might easily and na- 
turally be engrafted on the stock of a 



42 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

pastoral address, thus simple, affection- 
ate, and heavenly. And surely, if any 
means whatever could be competent to 
draw up the hearts, which still hung 
down to earth, into the finest sympathy 
with those in whom no rival of the 
blessed God could find a place — it would 
be the repetition from Sabbath to Sabbath 
of such a comment upon such a text. 

But let us, on the other hand, conceive 
this family group returning from a ser- 
mon directly levelled against the amuse- 
ments of the world. In what state of 
mutual feeling would this discourse have 
left them ? We will not speak of mere 
possibilities. For God no doubt could 
convert a soul, by detailed accounts of 
ball-rooms, theatres, and games of cards. 
But what are the fair probabilities of the 
case ? Would any sweet counsels be 
likely to ensue ? Would the party as- 
sailed be, at such a moment, in the most 
impressible and ductile frame of spirit? 
Would these be the mollia tempora 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 43 

fandi f No : the best that could ensue 
would be the exercise of such mutual 
delicacy and discretion, as would exclude 
all reference to the sermon from the 
evening's conversation. But it is not 
merely of the operation of such pulpit 
addresses upon private family circles, that 
I complain ; it is of their public, gene- 
ral, and collective effects upon a con- 
gregation. That it does not suit the 
taste, nor fit the temperament of the 
truly humble, meek, and pious, is my firm 
belief. That it offends and irritates the 
worldly-minded, there can be no question : 
and that the third and middle class be- 
tween the two, who have some religious 
light, mixed with much wildfire and party 
feeling — that these derive no benefit from 
such appeals, I am, if possible, still more 
confidently persuaded. Nothing can be 
less in accordance with the peace of God, 
or with that blessing with which our 
solemn assemblies are dismissed, than 
the spirit thus aroused within them. 



44 ON PUBLIC AxMUSEMENTS. 

They are filled with triumph, and stimu- 
lated to a feverish height. They chuckle 
at the thought, that their minister has 
laid on the lash so well. Significant nods 
are interchanged, and whispers freely cir- 
culate how their gay neighbours had got 
enough of it ; how one was afraid to 
look up from the ground, and another 
who determined to brave it, felt it the 
most of all. 

But whatever may be the effects upon 
a congregation, the influence upon the 
preacher's own mind is assuredly not a 
happy one. When the charge is made 
on those who live in actual sin, (though 
even here we have high authority for 
stating that a railing accusation should 
not be brought,) the rebuke descends 
with weight, and the accusation comes 
with " all authority." If the vicious and 
the profligate are present on so solemn 
an occasion, they side in their own con- 
sciences against themselves; they own 
and feel that their condemnation is just. 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 45 

Thus far the minister stands on firm and 
undisputed ground ; and in so doing pre- 
serves the balance of his mind, and calm- 
ness of his spirit. But I would appeal 
to the experience of those to whom I 
respectfully submit these hints, whether, 
when they have brought forward fashion- 
able amusements as points of direct at- 
tack, they have not insensibly assumed a 
tone of ruffled and excited feeling, as if 
such were in a measure inseparable from 
the subject. I have often observed this 
to be the case ; and I think it by no 
means difficult to assign the reason. The 
preacher now comes into collision with a 
considerable moral force. A large number 
of the respectable portion of his congre- 
gation are against him. Many that he 
meets at the sacrament, (and that he 
knowingly admits there, though fully 
aware of their opinions,) on system and 
principle, disapprove and condemn his 
allusion to these topics. He moves 
against a current; and the resistance of 



46 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

that current is of such a kind, that it 
agitates his mind, tries his temper, and 
often chafes him into a warmth unsuited 
to the position he is placed in. He may 
fancy, nay honestly believe, that all this 
is pure zeal for God, and bearing a manly 
testimony against an ungodly world. But 
"by their fruits ye shall know them," is 
in this case our surest rule ; and these 
ebullitions often leave the mind in that 
state of exhaustion which seems to say, 
that the fires were of its own kindling. 
God does not own these forced attempts, 
as he does the feeblest efforts of those 
who come forth, with clear credentials, 
in His name. The fact is, that the habits 
which are now in question, require a far 
gentler and more patient handling. And 
he who would lead men on to those higher 
influences, without which the renuncia- 
tion of these habits has neither worth 
nor meaning, must, by true and effectual 
self-denial, rise above all such collisions 
with them. He must cease from vain 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 47 

anxieties to " be some great one," to 
establish a reputation, or to make for 
himself a name in the eyes of mortals. 
With him it must be a very small thing 
to be judged of man's judgment. He 
must realize to his own mind that eter- 
nity which he preaches ; and, while he 
sows with all diligence here below, must 
be satisfied to gather his fruit beyond the 
grave, and to reap his harvest upon the 
fields of heaven. It is true that if he 
harbours, though unknown perhaps to 
himself, a desire of being conspicuous — 
if he wishes all to see how great an in- 
fluence he can exercise in his parish — if, 
for this purpose, his object is, to make a 
party whom he can point to as the pro- 
duct of his ministry, and the creation of 
his power — there is no readier way of 
effecting this, than by mere arbitrary 
authority to put down or scare away the 
amusements of the world. Where sin is 
banished, the effects are not so palpable. 
For sin in action seeks concealment ; and 



48 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

sin in principle dwells in the invisible 
regions of the soul. And thus the minis- 
try which saves most souls, may be com- 
paratively unnoticed and unknown. " In 
that day," many will arise and call him 
blessed, whom more bustling spirits and 
men of more public agencies had passed 
by, as a loiterer in his work, or mere 
cumberer of the ground. And, assuredly, 
to feel well satisfied to take the lowest 
room, to labour in the shade, and to 
receive no recompense nor reward from 
man's opinion, is no small proof that our 
conversation is in heaven, and our affec- 
tions set on things above. I remember 
to have met the following pointed reflec- 
tion in the writings of a pious clergyman. 
I quote from memory, and do not pledge 
myself for the words ; but the pregnant 
meaning I hope I never shall forget. 
" Alas ! " says he, " how angry do we 
often feel with our people, for not en- 
abling us to have the credit of converting 
them !" Doubtless those who minister 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 49 

in holy things, have much of this tempta- 
tion to watch and pray against. Nor is 
there any thing which tries more tho- 
roughly what manner of spirit we are of, 
than when the members of our congrega- 
tion w 7 ho have the world in their hearts, 
will, in spite of all our counsels, conform 
to it in their lives. To every minister it 
is, and ought to be, cause of sorrow, 
should even one of his flock descend from 
the high ground and upland pastures of 
the Gospel, into the swamps and miry 
levels of the world. But to him who 
looks for a conspicuous ministry, it is 
doubly mortifying when those whom he 
would exhibit as his " epistles " declare 
openly and by overt acts, that they are 
independent of his control. And here 
an additional argument presents itself 
against the expediency of denouncing 
public amusements from the pulpit, I 
mean the danger to which a minister 
thereby exposes the dignity of his office. 
It is true that, in the way of duty, we 

D 



50 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

should be ready to take up the cross of 
contumely and reproach. But it is equally 
true, that apostolical authority lays upon 
us this weighty charge, " Let no man 
despise thee." Now, if the line of preach- 
ing which I call in question were our 
duty, we should have only to perform it, 
let what may ensue. But in balancing 
whether it be thus binding on us or not, 
I think the consideration of no small im- 
portance, that it is often calculated to do 
any thing rather than magnify our office. 
If indeed the attempt to put down the 
amusements of the world is crowned with 
full success, it presents, no doubt, a strik- 
ing exhibition of ministerial power. But 
if it does not succeed, it makes an equal 
display of weakness. And this latter, I 
think it our wisdom, by every exercise of 
fair discretion, to avoid. If a minister 
bear his faithful testimony against sin, 
and sinners nevertheless still abound, 
there is nothing in this, deplorable as the 
case is, which seems to shew him up as a 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 51 

defeated man. Though he take up the 
lamentation of his Master, saying, " I 
have called, and ye refused; I have 
stretched out my hand, and no man re- 
garded ; but ye have set at nought all my 
counsel, and would none of my reproof;"' 
— he will still appear in the undiminished 
dignity of his sacred character. All the 
loss, the world itself being judge, will be 
not on his side, but on that of those who 
reject his calls and invitations. But when 
a clergyman is worsted in his assaults 
upon the amusements of the world, the 
effect is very different. He has now 
come forth upon a more doubtful arena. 
The antagonist with which he enters the 
lists is of another shape and nature. It 
is not unmingled evil, nor has it the im- 
potency of known and wilful sin. It does 
not fly, but dares to meet its adversary. 
The pursuits in question occupy a kind 
of middle ground; and to that ground 
must he descend, who comes into direct 
and close collision with them. The true 



52 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

opponent of sin is holiness ; and u every 
battle of the warrior" in the service of 
the latter, is fought with spiritual instru- 
ments and celestial arms. But between 
these two extremes, the war is mutually- 
waged with weapons in some degree of 
kindred metal, and congenial temper. 
And precisely in this half-and-half posi- 
tion, and on this central ground, stand 
the open attacker and the wilful follower 
of the amusements of the world; wrong, 
I grant, in very different degrees, but 
neither of them strictly right. This then, 
I fully believe, is the reason why victory 
on either side assumes the palpable ap- 
pearance of triumph. 

But whether this be the true solution 
of the fact, or no, the fact itself cannot 
be doubted — that if a clergyman publicly 
denounce the habits in question, and if 
these habits, nevertheless, maintain their 
ground in his locality or parish, he finds 
himself in an awkward and distressing 
attitude. Many of his flock, who gather 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 53 

round him on the Sunday, have, during 
the week, openly renounced his minis- 
terial authority. Had these persons (a 
thing hardly to be conceived) joined to- 
gether in the commission of some flagrant 
sin, none but Satan himself could claim 
this as a victory. If all triumph were not 
utterly excluded in so sad a case, it would 
be the triumph of those alone who re- 
joiced that sin was dragged from its con- 
cealment, and put to an open shame. 
But, in the former instance, the sense of 
those who are implicated with neither 
party is by no means so favourable to 
the insulted minister. Even those who 
think his opponents wrong, do not neces- 
sarily admit that he was right. If they 
condemn the follies of the one, they can- 
not acquit the other at least of indiscre- 
tion. The common feeling and general 
sense are, that there has been frailty on 
both sides. The clergyman, having failed 
to gain his point, has gratuitously and 
injudiciously tried his strength, and shewn 



54 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

his want of power. And thus, if his in- 
fluence be lessened, he is considered, in 
some sense, as the artificer of his own 
fortune. 

I am quite aware that, should any ball- 
going clergyman, if such there be, or any 
ball-loving gentleman or lady, peruse 
these lines, they may be so far likely to 
misconceive my meaning, as to claim my 
humble advocacy for their cause. Nor 
am I without some painful apprehensions, 
that many faithful ministers may view 
them with a jealous eye. As it respects 
the latter, nevertheless, I trust that when 
they consider what I have yet to urge, 
they will so far correct their first impres- 
sions, as to acquit me of the charge, 
however unworthy I may be to uplift it, 
of lowering the standard of religion. If 
I question the expediency of direct attacks 
upon amusements, they will not withhold 
the right hand of fellowship from one 
whose anxieties and prayers are in the 
fullest harmony with theirs, that all who 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 55 

name the name of Christ would rise above 
them. Nor will they refuse kindly and 
liberally to give me credit, when I declare 
it as my conviction, that amongst those 
whom, with becoming deference, I would 
warn against an erroneous zeal, are to be 
found some shining lights and ornaments 
of the church. Men who, as a body, 
present to the supporters of systematic 
levities as bright a contrast as this world 
of lights and shades can, in any chamber 
of her imagery, display. I feel that my 
suggestions are offered to some persons, 
to whose important labours, all my poor 
endeavours, now in the course of nature 
drawing near their close, are but as a 
drop of water to the ocean. Writing in 
such a spirit, though they may dispute 
my judgment, they w r ill not misconstrue 
my intentions. Nor will the sequel of 
this letter, it is my confident persuasion, 
leave them room to suspect, that I mean 
to bend the strictest line of Gospel holi- 
ness ; to extenuate the richness of its 



56 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

gifts, the fulness of its grace, or the pleni- 
tude of its blessings. 

However the foregoing observations 
may concern the Christian ministry at 
large, they apply, with additional and 
peculiar force, to the clergy of the Esta- 
blished Church. The bearing of the 
latter upon general society is wholly 
different from that of dissenterism, of 
whatever form. A sect is to the nation 
in its corporate capacity, what a lopped- 
offlimb is to the body. The establish- 
ment is to the nation, what the soul is to 
the body. The church and state form 
one whole. The former is but the latter 
in a different aspect, and so vice versa. 
The one is the nation, politically consi- 
dered ; the other is the nation, religiously 
considered. Such is the theory of the 
case : and, doubtless, if that theory were 
carried into full effect, the church would 
breathe into every department of society 
the breath of life ; would so infuse herself 
into the universal mass, that the whole 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 57 

body would be full of light. For this 
purpose it is that she is made to answer 
to her grosser counterpart, as face to 
face in a glass ; touching her at every 
point of contact, and rising with her, as 
she, by due steps, ascends from her foun- 
dation to her summit. Such correspond- 
ence to the secular world seems, on a 
superficial view, to prove her secular too. 
But the fact is, that in this very thing 
consists her spirituality. Though the 
separated limb may say, "I am not of 
the body ; is it therefore not of the 
body ?" It is removed, but it is not 
thereby changed : it is, according to the 
vulgar phrase, a chip of the old block. 
Hence no sect, I speak not of individuals 
but of systems, can be purely spiritual. 
To outward appearance it is far less " of 
the w r orld" than the national church is. 
But this is all because its separation is 
outward, circumstantial, and visible to 
the eyes of man. It resembles a disso- 
lution of partnership between two rivals 

d2 



58 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

of conflicting tempers, and clashing in- 
terests ; who trade upon the same 
bottom, and have the same commodities 
to barter, but cannot agree upon the 
mode of management. What a sect 
not unfrequently mistakes for extrication 
is, not leaving, but running into a corner 
of the world, like some affrighted animal, 
which, while a ship is sinking, seeks an 
imaginary safety in some hole or crevice 
of the vessel. But the establishment 
considered, not in its temporal provi- 
sions, (for these may hitch in the politics, 
and entangle in the machinery of the 
world,) but in its religious aspect, may, 
nay it is of the very essence of her in- 
stitution that she should, fill the whole 
circle of society. She may leaven the 
whole system, and still interfere with 
none of its arrangements. After the 
similitude of that light of which she is 
the dispenser, she may be present every- 
where, and yet require that nothing 
should be disturbed, nothing displaced, 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 59 

that, like grosser substances, she may 
clear a field of occupation for herself. 
Such are the character of her agency 
and the nature of her operations. She 
exercises herself in the things that are 
God's, and leaves to Cesar the things that 
are Cesar's ; because between these two 
there are none of those affinities on which 
the claims of rivalship are founded. 

It is self-evident that the functionaries 
in such a scheme should exercise great 
tact, and employ a scrupulous caution, in 
interfering with the established forms and 
conventional usages of society. As far 
as the infusion of principle can control 
the outward conduct ; as far as advancing 
light is fitted by its own efficiency to 
dispel the clouds which the world, with 
all its wisdom, has thrown around the 
paths of life ; so far the ministers of 
our church may reform the habits, and 
" change the customs" of mankind. Of 
course I do not now speak of things 
positively evil. However sin may mys- 



60 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

teriously mingle with the process, it is no 
recognised part of the machinery of the 
world. Human laws and temporal autho- 
rities oppose it in every department to 
which their jurisdiction can extend. Con- 
sequently, if sin be assailed from the 
pulpit, the denunciation is rather for, 
than against, established rule and order. 
But when the object of the attack is 
closely interwoven with the whole texture 
of society, so that to separate it from the 
piece, w r ould cause a rent, which, though 
easy to make, it would be hard, if pos- 
sible, to mend; here one sees the utter 
incongruity of such a disturbing agency 
with the peculiar character of our func- 
tion. Were an irregular teacher in point 
blank English to maintain the unlawful- 
ness of one man's going to Court, and of 
another man's consenting to be called 
your Lordship or your Grace ; or were he 
to assert, as a truly devoted minister not 
long since did, that no Christian should 
reserve more for his own expenses, than 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 61 

served for food and raiment, but give all 
that was over and above in charity to the 
poor ; however mistaken we might con- 
ceive such doctrine, we could not charge 
the propounder with inconsistency, till 
we knew the principles of his sect. He 
might belong to a party who thought the 
present constitution of society an evil, 
and that the whole fabric and framework 
should come down. But if a clergyman 
of the Established Church were to set 
forth such principles, there would be a 
glaring incongruity between his doctrine 
and his office. All that heard him might 
at once exclaim, " Thou that teachest 
another, teachest thou not thyself? If 
levelling and equality are the order of 
the day, why do you still keep that place? 
If you are honest, and believe the lessons 
which you give, why not begin yourself 
to put them into practice ? Why not re- 
nounce at once your connexion with a 
system, which owns, sanctions, and ex- 
hibits that gradation of ranks rising to 



62 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

the very foot of the throne, of which you 
now stand forth to say, ' Down with it, 
down with it, even to the ground?" 

I do not mean, however, to affirm that 
the amusements of the world are a neces- 
sary and indispensable part of the provi- 
dential framework of society; neither 
would I take upon me to say that they 
are not. I am sure that, in the days of 
millennial purity and blessedness, such 
frivolous and vain pursuits will have no 
place. But whether, in the present min- 
gled scheme of things, the thirst for mere 
pleasure could be so safely met ; whether 
the vacuities of idleness could with so 
little risk be filled ; whether the distinc- 
tions of rank and splendours of courts 
could be so well kept up by any other 
means, as by these brilliances, — I confess 
myself wholly incompetent to decide. 
Certain it is, that the supreme Disposer 
of the w r orld has, in all ages, and in all 
nations, made provision for something of 
the kind. And certain it no less is, that 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 63 

if society, at its present moral level, were 
deprived of these its accustomed stimu- 
lants, it would seek for some substitutes 
to supply their place. Would the change, 
then, in all fair probability, be for the 
better ? Would not rank, thus stripped 
of all its drapery, be forced to clothe itself 
in sullen haughtiness and tenfold pride ? 
Would not the young and thoughtless, 
shut out from all the scenes of lighter 
gaiety, rush, in too many instances, as 
their only resource, into the horrible pit 
and miry clay of sensual and degrading 
vices ? Could the Church regain her 
plenitude of power, and dictate to the 
state a code of laws, by which all theatres 
were closed, balls and concerts made 
penal, and every amusement banished 
from the land, — who will say, that public 
morals would be improved ? Nay, who 
will deny, that the most fearful conse- 
quences might ensue, and that human 
passions might take a far worse direction 
than they do at present, and sweep all 



64 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

decency before them? Surely, then, it 
cannot be our line of duty to attempt, as 
individuals, upon a lesser scale, what, if 
carried into general effect, would be but 
too likely to injure, not benefit, society 
at large ? It cannot be desirable for a 
minister, even if he could, by the mere 
weight of his authority to chase away 
from his locality or district every means 
and opportunity of gratifying a taste for 
lighter pleasures ; leaving the mind no 
power of choosing, and forcing upon the 
younger members of his flock more 
serious habits, and more semblance of 
religious strictness, than their hearts in- 
clined to, or their consciences approved. 
Surely such harshness is not well calcu- 
lated to conciliate the affections, or to 
win the soul to God. 

Nor can I think it suitable, to a mi- 
nister of the national church especially, 
to raise a standard, and set up a principle, 
which exhibit the powers that be, and 
the authorities of the land, as almost to 



ON TUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 65 

a man and ex officio, traitors to their God. 
It could not have been good, in a public 
point of view, to have held forth, in his 
day, such a sovereign as George the 
Third, as, like the men of Sodom, "a 
sinner before the Lord exceedingly," be- 
cause he sometimes followed the hounds, 
went in state to the theatre, or was pre- 
sent at a dance. God forbid that I should 
speak in a spirit of levity about such 
things, or treat any thing as a trifle, in 
which religion is concerned. God forbid 
that I should, with a presumptuous breath 
blow even the feather which floats upon 
the air, or wilfully forget that every spot 
on which I set my foot is holy ground. 
No ; I speak this language, because I feel 
that we should act considerately, and on 
well-weighed principle, in the things of 
God. It is not consistent on the platform 
to cry up the memory of George the 
Third, as being a pattern to the world, 
arid then to ascend the pulpit, and deal 
forth doctrines w T hich would blacken that 



66 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

memory with the charge of open, wilful, 
and unrepented sin, I wish rather to 
shew, that men of a cheerful, charitable, 
and vigorous piety, could have revered 
that monarch as the father of his people, 
and left it with his judgment rather than 
their own, to settle with his Maker, the 
grounds on which he acted, in matters of 
doubtful balance. On the other hand I 
admit, that sour, severe, and censorious 
spirits might strain at these gnats, see 
nothing in that exalted character but its 
fancied blots, and thank God that they 
were not such as he was, while he per- 
haps was often upon his knees in suppli- 
cation to his God, that He would guard 
him amidst the fires of temptation through 
which he passed, for the maintenance of 
his crown, and for the benefit of his 
people. 

If I were asked how I would place the 
amusements in question in the moral 
scale, and to what class I would refer 
them in this world of antagonist forces 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 67 

and conflicting elements, my answer 
would be this: I consider them, on the 
one hand, as not being positive sins ; 
neither, on the other hand, do I think 
them so far removed from sin, as that a 
mind enlightened from above, could be a 
voluntary sharer in them, without " hurt 
and much damage " to itself. Like the 
digit which stands for a given number, or 
for that number multiplied to an indefi- 
nite extent, not by any change in itself, 
but by the shifting of its position in the 
line of figures ; — so may these pursuits 
be lawful or unlawful, according to the 
responsibility and the religious standing 
of those who follow them. And thus, 
what is one man's meat, is another man's 
poison. Nobody will affirm, that it is 
wrong in a child "to speak as a child, 
to understand as a child, to think as a 
child." But assuredly, if lie who ought 
to put away childish things, were to re- 
nounce his manhood, and to retrograde 
to the pursuits of childish days, it would 



68 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

be an unwarrantable abuse of gifts for 
which he must render an account to God. 
Now the case before us, though consist- 
ing, I confess, of far less pure and simple 
elements, is somewhat parallel. The 
great mass of society, even in Christian 
lands, is far more removed from the light 
and sanctity of true religion, than natural 
childhood is from man's maturity. A 
large portion of this mass is, I am per- 
suaded, sunk so low, that to gain a taste 
for the most trifling gaieties of life would 
be an ascent and not a fall upon the gra- 
duated scale of morals. It would be to 
exchange the foul retreats of sensual 
passion, for scenes of comparative inno- 
cence ; to pass from the dark abodes of 
strife and bloodshed, into an atmosphere 
of courtesy and kindness. We do not 
perhaps sufficiently calculate how low 
corrective influences must descend, to 
come into contact with the dense and 
polluted population of which our large 
towns and cities are composed. Let 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 69 

every effort be made to bring the sound 
of the Gospel and the message of salva- 
tion to those who thus sit in the region 
and shadow of death. Let this light 
spring up in every soul, and assembly- 
rooms and theatres would soon be closed. 
Othello's occupation would be gone. But 
to those who refuse at once to come into 
marvellous light, all means of gradual 
elevation should not be denied. If upon 
this dangerous ocean, men will decline 
deliverance offered, and still will trust to 
their leaky vessel, let us not, if we could, 
thrust them down into the hold ; let us 
suffer them to come up on deck. There 
they may at least see the danger they 
are in. There they may behold the ark 
riding in secure majesty above the waves, 
and may, before it is too late, seek and 
find a refuge in her. I am convinced 
that the theatre has been to some a 
school at least of heathen virtues ; and 
surely heathen virtues are better than 
heathen vices. It has raised the grovel- 



70 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

ling slave of avarice, selfishness, and 
animal indulgence, to a more human 
level. It has taught him that honour, 
patriotism, disinterestedness, and friend- 
ship are not mere empty names, — that 
we do not live for ourselves alone, but 
that man has claims upon the heart of 
man. It has been said that the play of 
George Barnwell exercised a most salu- 
tary influence on the apprentices of Lon- 
don. Now, did amusements imply any 
positive breach of God's commandments, 
it would be worse than vain to plead for 
their continuance, on the ground that 
they may act as sanative poison upon the 
world's distempers. We are not to do 
evil that good may come of it. " Thou 
shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour, 
and not suffer sin upon him," is the posi- 
tive command of Scripture. It has often 
occurred that one sin has expelled another 
from the mind ; and that human depra- 
vity forcibly restrained, and denied a vent 
in one direction, has only burst forth 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 71 

with tenfold horrors in another. But 
however these things may be in the per- 
missive providence of God, the pulpit has 
no discretionary powers, no dispensations 
to grant where sin is the point in hand. 
It must still proclaim " the wrath of God 
revealed from heaven against all ungod- 
liness and unrighteousness of men." It 
must still " lift up its voice like a trumpet, 
and shew the people their transgression, 
and the house of Jacob their sin." 

That the amusements of the world, 
however, are not directly of this charac- 
ter, needs no proof, at least to those who 
agree with the minister before alluded to, 
that a person was warranted in frequent- 
ing them, in obedience to human au- 
thority. I could not perhaps describe 
my own idea of their true moral position 
more clearly, than by supposing two 
persons, of previous habits in the very 
extreme of opposition, meeting together 
at some gay assembly. Let us picture to 
ourselves, on the one hand, a man de- 



72 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

graded to the lowest depth to which a 
course of sin could sink him, — continuing 
night after night till wine inflamed him, 
and then setting forth primed and pre- 
pared for every crime, to which a sen- 
sualised heart and maddened brain could 
prompt him. Let us imagine him at 
length coming to himself, — not indeed, 
like the prodigal in the Gospel, with that 
godly sense of sin which brings him back 
in penitence to his Heavenly Father's 
bosom, but with that keen apprehension 
of temporal misery, which compels him 
to resolve upon a change of life, And 
let it not be said that even this, dark 
in its view, and low in its aim as it 
doubtless is, may not be the first step 
towards the restoration of a soul to 
God. Well then, he determines that 
he will be no longer an outcast from 
all reputable society, and from the de- 
cencies of life. He puts on fortitude ; 
he dares to meet his former friends ; 
and to seek reconciliation with his of- 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 73 

fended family. They are all, we will 
suppose, people of the world. They 
receive him kindly. They invite him to 
return to his former habits, and to ap- 
pear again in the company of his equals. 
He gratefully accepts their right hand of 
fellowship. He hails their pleasures as a 
refuge from his vile debaucheries. He 
avails himself of their re-introduction to 
scenes from which his vices had long 
excluded him ; and in that frame of mind 
is seen in the assembly, at which I have 
supposed him present. There he meets, 
let us imagine, with an individual cir- 
cumstanced far differently from himself, 
one who has come down from higher 
ground, to stand upon that level to which 
he has just ascended, one who had heard 
and obeyed that voice which says, 
" Come out from among them, and be ye 
separate, and touch not the unclean 
thing ; and I will receive you and will be 
a father unto you, and ye shall be my 
sons and daughters, saith the Lord 

E 



74 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

Almighty ;" — one who had bade farewell 
to the vanities of time ; who had turned 
away his eyes from those artificial and 
dazzling lights which blind the vision of 
the soul ; and hailed the dawn of a 
never-ending day ;— one who had taken 
up his cross, and vowed fidelity to a 
master who was crucified for his sins, 
who loved him, and gave himself for 
him. But let him that thinketh he 
standeth, take heed lest he fall. I have 
no desire on this occasion to entertain 
the question whether those who have 
once attained to the adoption of sons, 
ever finally fall away. But this I will 
confidently affirm, that many who were 
once apparently near to God, leave their 
father's house, and wander into a far 
country, and find a mighty famine in 
that land. Some, through sudden and 
violent temptation, fall as lightning out 
of heaven. Others slide down, by little 
and little, from the bright eminence on 
which they stood, and by slow degrees, 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 75 

u after they have escaped the pollutions 
of the world, through the knowledge of 
the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, are 
again entangled therein, and overcome." 
They decline in vigilance, grow negligent 
in prayer, and feel an aching void within 
that bosom which religious consolations 
once had filled. Thev do not now find 
their happiness in God. They have 
thrown away that present blessing which 
it was the high office and privilege of 
conscience to preserve inviolate. They 
have lost the secret and infallible test by 
which the Christian tries the lawfulness 
of his pleasures, namely, whether they 
are consistent with the faithful devotion 
of the heart to God. And thus against 
frivolous habits, once voluntarily re- 
nounced, there remains no guard but the 
feeling that we are pledged to that re- 
nunciation, and shall be charged with 
fickleness and inconsistency by our 
stricter friends, if we venture to retrace 
our steps. But these are but feeble w r ea- 



76 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

pons against the world, the flesh, and the 
devil. In the hour of temptation these 
succours fall away ; these secondary mo- 
tives vanish into air. And in proportion 
as we lose our hold upon the only arm 
which can bear us up, we sink in the 
moral scale, by a law as infallible as the 
tendency of material bodies to the centre 
of their attraction. 

In such a downward progress, then, a 
man may with much distrust, and almost 
wondering at himself, have just ventured 
back, for the first time after years of 
separation, into the midst of the giddy 
throng, in some scene of public gaiety. 
There he meets, as we before supposed, 
with one who is moving in an opposite 
direction ; one who has come up from 
still lower scenes of folly and debase- 
ment. They are both, for the present, 
engaged in the same pursuits, and are 
sharers in the same festivities : they 
both, in point of fact, occupy a common 
ground, and meet upon the same level. 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 77 

But, in moral consideration, is it the 
same ground or level to each respect- 
ively ? No. They are now passing one 
another on the road of life. Let them 
but continue to yield to the impulses 
which sent them there ; and the one will 
ascend from those low beginnings into 
that light which the other has left behind 
him in his downward progress to the 
depths of ruin. But why should I de- 
scribe the backslider who has thus re- 
turned to the frivolities of his former 
life, as in progress only, or as commencing 
to unlearn the lessons of his discipleship 
to Christ ? I much doubt whether the 
once enlightened soul which takes to the 
world in its more decent forms, does not 
more thoroughly apostatize, than if it had 
been cast by some sudden surprisal upon 
the rocks of abandonment and open sin. 
There are, in fact, two distinct species 
of temptation : the one natural, and the 
other, if I may so speak, artificial. The 
former class address themselves to man's 



78 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

lower nature ; — to principles and pro- 
pensities which, though conquered, still 
live and will live in the best of men, as 
long as they continue in these taber- 
nacles of flesh and blood. Against the 
irascible and sensual passions, the saint 
has still to watch and pray ; and if for a 
moment off his guard, may be conceived 
to fall before these dangerous foes, — the 
case of David may tell how low. But 
the latter species of temptation, arising 
from the conventional usages of the 
world, and artificial in their very essence, 
are in reality to the pious man no 
temptations at all. They are utterly 
opposed to the whole current of his 
tastes, his inclinations, and if we can use 
the word in so favourable a sense, his 
prejudices. It is impossible therefore, 
that they can take him by surprise. He 
must be unmade; the whole texture of 
his mind must be unravelled; he must 
be changed into another man, before 
they can have the least power to touch 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 79 

him, or assail him. On these grounds, 
then, I rest what will appear to some, I 
know, a bold assertion; — namely, that 
for a man who has once, on religious 
principles, forsaken the commonplace 
vanities of the world, to measure back 
his steps and voluntarily to partake of 
them, implies a more unequivocal aliena- 
tion of the heart from God, than an un- 
broken fall to the very bottom of the 
moral precipice. I grant, and am ready 
to repeat, that the ordinary amusements 
of society are not in themselves to be 
classed with sins. But they belong to 
the category of artificial temptations ; 
they are part and parcel of a system, out 
of which it is the very essence of true 
conversion to be delivered ; and, there- 
fore, to be capable of yielding to that 
attraction, demonstratively proves that 
the mind has lost its spiritual tone, and 
that the spark of the divine life has fled. 

I will suppose a man, such as it has 
been my privilege from time to time to 



80 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

meet, to whom all would point with full 
consent, and say, — there is one who 
bears, as far as frail mortality can reach, 
the image and superscription of his 
Saviour. Were I then, after long per- 
sonal knowledge of so exalted a cha- 
racter, to hear the melancholy tidings, 
that in an ill-fated moment he had com- 
mitted some desperate act of flagrant, 
open sin ; — what would be the first im- 
pression of my mind, on the announce- 
ment of this sad intelligence ? I should 
experience mingled astonishment and 
pity. I should hasten to him, that I 
might inquire the cause. In the mean- 
time, sorrow, and not indignation, would 
fill my mind. I should remember David. 
I should sigh over the frailty of our 
common nature. I should frame to my- 
self some strange combination of irri- 
tating and exciting circumstances, which 
could alone have led to so dire a ca- 
tastrophe. My imagination would be 
filled with pictures of the wretchedness 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 81 

in which the actor in these scenes was 
plunged. I should not be even tempted 
to give him up as lost : I should trust 
that in his cup of misery hope was at the 
bottom; — that, though degraded in the 
eyes of men, he had already fled to the 
atonement of the cross, and found mercy 
in the sight of God; and that, before I 
saw him, the good Samaritan would have 
had compassion, and bound up his 
wounds, and poured into them the balm 
and consolations of His pardoning love. 
But if a character of the same high 
stamp were reported to me, as having, 
with all sobriety and decorum, presented 
himself at the theatre ; — I confess that, 
in this case, my feelings would run in a 
far different channel. I say feelings — 
for I trust I should pass no deliberate 
sentence, but leave it rather to God to 
judge him. But assuredly, the spon- 
taneous and instinctive tendency of my 
mind would be, to consider him as a 
mere cheat. I should be inclined to set 
e 2 



82 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

down all his former pretensions " as 
sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal;" 
and all that he had appeared to be, as 
mere semblance, and not worth. Or, if I 
believed him to have been once sincere, I 
should view him as an apostate, who had 
deeply revolted from his God ; — as one 
who had not been hurried out of himself 
by impetuous passions, but had, with his 
wits about him, declined from the better 
way ; — as one who had not fallen by 
sudden surprisal, but w r ho had, on cal- 
culation, drawn back. And we know 7 
who has said, " If any man draw back, 
my soul shall have no pleasure in him." 

It is certain that, in human attach- 
ments, indifference is dreaded more than 
even hostility and aversion. Hatred may 
be converted into love ; but to apathy 
and unconcern the principle of the old 
philosophy applies,— ex nihilo nihil Jit. 
The pulse may intermit, or fly as if all 
nature w r ere in an uproar; and yet the 
disease may yield to the remedies of the 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 83 

healing art, and the constitution be re- 
stored to perfect soundness, and to vi- 
gorous health. But if the pulse has 
ceased to beat, the case is hopeless. 
Thus it is with those ties which bind us 
to our fellows in special bonds of love. 
And that the same rule still holds with 
reference to our higher relations, we 
learn from the declaration of Him who 
came down from heaven to conciliate 
our affections, and to win our hearts : 
" I would thou wert cold or hot. So 
then, because thou art lukewarm, and 
neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out 
of my mouth." 

But to bring this letter towards a close. 
If the amusements of the world, or at 
least if a voluntary participation of them, 
be inconsistent with that conformity to 
the image of God's Son, to which the 
Gospel calls its true disciples, should the 
pulpit be altogether silent upon a subject 
so vital and so important ? And though, 
in the slow process of meliorating the 



84 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

general mass, such questionable pursuits 
may be providentially overruled to bene- 
ficial purposes, does not the Christian 
pastor do, or rather suffer evil, that good 
may come, by leaving them to take their 
course, and bearing no public testimony 
against them ? To this I answer that I 
have in the foregoing observations by no 
means gone the length of saying, that the 
preachers of God's word should suffer the 
torrent of dissipation to flow, and put 
forth no hand to stem it. No ; what I 
would respectfully warn my brethren 
against is, the making direct attacks, not 
upon the spirit of frivolity and levity, but 
upon balls, and concerts, and suchlike 
recreations. I would warn a clergyman, 
if he be a man of leading intellect and 
commanding influence, against speaking 
of these things, as if in a business-like 
manner to put them down, and thereby 
to make, what some would think, a tyran- 
nical use of his authority. I would warn 
him against his so addressing himself on 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 85 

these subjects to the mere opus operatum 
of the matter, as would involve all who 
frequented any given scene of dissipation 
in his neighbourhood, whether willing or 
unwilling, whether compelling others, or 
compelled by others to attend, in one 
sweeping charge of infamy and guilt. I 
would warn the pastor against placing 
himself in distressing and fruitless col- 
lision with a large portion of his flock, so 
that if a ball were given in his locality he 
would stand the brunt of something like 
a contested election, in which the strug- 
gle was, whether he or the conductors of 
the festivity would poll a majority of 
voters. All this I am compelled to think 
most unsuitable to the mild and effica- 
cious exercise of a Christian ministry. 
One hint I would just offer, which in a 
practical shape embodies the spirit of 
what I mean. Suppose a clergyman 
were, contrary to my judgment, to think 
it his duty to preach against what are 
called amusements ; and that in his own 



86 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

parish, or near vicinity, an entertainment 
of the kind were on the eve of taking 
place. This, then, I conceive to be, of 
all others the time, when he should ab- 
stain from any allusion to such topics. 
His doing so would at least shew that he 
did not wish to declare open war, or to 
bring matters to a pitched battle. Where- 
as an opposite line of conduct would 
perhaps compel a large, and by no means 
necessarily the worst, portion of his pa- 
rishioners, to hold him forth to public 
view, as one whose ministry was slighted, 
and whose authority was despised. I am 
far however from the intention, God for- 
bid I should entertain the thought, of 
recommending a cowardly or compro- 
mising prudence, which would flinch, on 
this or any other occasion, from declaring 
the whole counsel of God. I would not, 
it is true, speak as if I would, had I the 
power to do so, and as if those that are 
in authority ought to, shut up every 
theatre in the land ; nor would I use a 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 87 

language which would point out the in- 
dividual who had attended some public 
entertainment, as a marked man in the 
congregation. I would not mention balls, 
and plays, and cards, by name, and seem 
as if I classed them with murder, adul- 
tery, and theft. This I should feel con- 
vinced could do no good — could merely 
irritate and give offence. I would, as far 
as possible, use a language which, while 
it left my hearers at liberty as to their 
exterior habits, would clearly set before 
them the claims and nature of those rival 
objects which bid for ascendancy in their 
hearts. I would not so stigmatize the 
overt act, that those who wished to join 
in scenes of gaiety would be ashamed of 
the appearance of their doing so, or would 
be frayed away by mere senseless scruple 
from recreations which they loved ; but I 
would so exhibit all vain pursuits and 
glittering follies in the light of Scripture, 
and so contrast them with the glorious 
realities and living substances of religion, 



88 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

as, in the estimation of every capable un- 
derstanding, to convert the pleasures of 
the world into pains and penalties, and 
its amusements into worse than weariness. 
I would tell my hearers, on an authority 
which none could gainsay, that those 
" that live in pleasure are dead while 
they live." I would declare to them, 
that " all that is in the world, the lust of 
the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and 
the pride of life, is not of the Father, but 
is of the world. And the world passeth 
away, and the lust thereof; but he that 
doeth the will of God abideth for ever." 
I would, with the great Instructor, place 
the fleeting joys of earth in juxta-position 
with the durable felicities of eternity, and 
leave it to the mind and heart to make 
their option. " Whosoever drinketh of 
this water shall thirst again : but whoso- 
ever drinketh of the water that I shall 
give him shall never thirst ; but the water 
that I shall give him shall be in him a 
well of water springing up into everlasting 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 89 

life." In short, I would cease from that 
petty fire, which only stimulates to resist- 
ance and provokes return, and bring at 
once to bear upon the congregation the 
heavy artillery of those fundamental and 
eternal truths which are revealed from 
heaven. It is related of a great philoso- 
pher, whose thoughts dwelt more 

" In regions mild of calm and serene air," 

than amidst 

" the smoke and stir of this dim spot. 



Which men call earth," 

that being much addicted to pets, he 
made in the door of the apartment allot- 
ted to their use two holes of different 
sizes, one for the larger, and the other 
for the smaller animals. Now a more 
practical man w r ould have had no diffi- 
culty in seeing how amply the wider 
space would have provided for the use of 
all ; and consequently, how wholly un- 
called for was the lesser aperture. No- 
thing can, in my mind, exhibit in a more 



90 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

lively manner the mismanagement by 
which some well-meaning preachers con- 
trive to throw away their time, and lose 
their golden opportunities. Their object 
seems to be to cast a partial light upon 
the private concerns of individuals, and 
expose them to the view of the congrega- 
tion ; while they withhold that universal 
sunshine which reaches all consciences, 
but sets a visible mark on no man's cha- 
racter — which is as penetrative as it is 
diffusive, piercing even to the " soul and 
spirit," and to the secret chambers of the 
heart. The constitution of the soul is 
tuned in fine accordance with the con- 
stitution of the body. The diseases also 
which affect them, and the remedies to 
which these diseases yield, are not less 
strictly analogous ; they are, as it were, 
the spiritual and material counterpart the 
one of the other. He then is a bad prac- 
titioner in either department, who de- 
ceives his patients and himself, by partial 
applications and topical cures ; who pal- 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 91 

liates symptoms as they arise, while their 
root and cause is left to prey upon the 
vitals, and contaminate the blood. As 
it respects the practical details of con- 
duct, the great object of the pulpit should 
be, to inculcate and reiterate those grand 
and leading motives, which each indivi- 
dual himself may use as a master key to 
fit every lock within him, and as a test 
by which he may try the lawfulness of 
every step he takes in life. To one or 
two of these I would now refer. 

Let it then be distinctly and constantly 
proclaimed, that no Christian, consistently 
with his profession, can perform any 
action, engage in any pursuit, or indulge 
in any pleasure which he conscientiously 
believes will be remembered with regret 
at the hour of death, and in the day of 
judgment. Let this truth be pressed with 
an earnestness and solemnity as though 
the preacher felt the nothingness of time, 
and the awful reality of eternity. Let 
him urge it upon his hearers, as one who 



92 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

pleads with them for their life. Let him 
put it to their understandings, to the rea- 
son that God has given them, to the 
vicegerent which He has implanted in 
their breasts, whether it is not more than 
madness to set up any standard or cri- 
terion of our actions, short of this simple 
recognition, that there is another life, and 
that that life will be everlasting weal or 
woe. I have known the following sug- 
gestion to have been submitted to a con- 
gregation with no inconsiderable effect. 

If you were told, on some infallible 
authority, that you were to die this day 
month or this day fortnight, do you think 
that such an expectation would lead you 
to resolve on living more " holily, and 
justly, and unblameably," than you now 
resolve on living ? If so— can your reli- 
gion be sincere ; or can your hearts be 
right in the sight of God ? Can that be 
considered as a state of salvation, or, in 
other w T ords, of true reconciliation with 
God, in which the determination is, that 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 93 

if He will bless us with length of days, 
we will not serve Him and obey Him 
with the same fidelity and zeal that we 
would do, if we had the near prospect of 
death before us ? If such be the use we 
mean to make of life, would it not be 
mercy, if the case could indeed admit of 
any, to cut us down, and let us no longer 
" cumber the ground ?" Assuredly, if no 
remembrance of a Saviour's cross and 
passion — if no consent of the heart to the 
dictates of essential goodness, no sym- 
pathy of the soul with the laws of ever- 
lasting righteousness — if no breathings 
after a participation of the Divine nature, 
no love of God's perfections, no thirst for 
the emanations of His glory — if none of 
these tender and ennobling motives ac- 
tuate our minds, what can obedience, 
extorted by the fear of death, amount to, 
but to that homage of the lips without 
the heart, which God disclaims ; that 
sacrifice of the wicked which God abhors ? 
I do not mean to say, that in mere cir- 



94 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

cumstantials, our conduct should be pre- 
cisely of its ordinary character, if such a 
communication as I have supposed were 
made to us. " To every thing," says the 
wise man, " there is a season, and a time 
to every purpose under heaven." Even 
for appearance sake, and for fear of 
offence to weaker consciences, the man 
who contemplated his death with the 
most familiar repose, and homefelt ease 
of heart, might in such a case withdraw 
from many accustomed scenes, and ab- 
stain from many habitual pursuits. How- 
ever innocent or lawful in themselves, he 
might consider them as no longer suitable 
to one who had so lately heard that 
solemn voice, " Arise ye, and depart ; for 
this is not your rest." But such a change, 
I repeat it, could be only in circumstantial 
matters. To suppose him now resolving 
to abstain from allowed indulgences, be- 
cause of their intrinsic incompatibility 
with a pure conscience, would be, in 
other words, to say, that up to the pre- 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 95 

sent moment, he had lived in open sin, 
and wilful rebellion against his God. But 
though the individual who thinks that if 
warned of approaching dissolution, he 
would resolve to live more loyally towards 
heaven than he can bring himself to 
resolve at present ; — though such an one, 
as all will grant, betray by that very 
thought the want of true and genuine 
loyalty of soul ; yet it may be supposed, 
that even upon the purest mind the near 
prospect of death would exercise a power- 
ful moral influence. On a superficial 
view, it appears as if it would come so 
triumphantly in aid of every other motive, 
as to render us invulnerable to tempta- 
tions, and to quench all the fiery darts of 
the wicked one. I confess my doubts, 
however, that this would be, to any con- 
siderable extent, the case. Much, I 
grant, would depend on the habits, the 
circumstances, the bodily and mental 
constitution of the individual — on the 
state of his worldly affairs — on the fact 



96 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

that more or less business were crowded 
into the few days which now remained to 
him — on the nature of the disease, which 
was sent as the messenger to call him — 
on the tempers and characters and state 
of feeling of those who surrounded him 
on so solemn an occasion. Many con- 
siderations of this kind might be taken 
into account, and go to form the special- 
ties of the case. And these might render 
such an interval of anticipated death, in 
some instances more, in others less, fa- 
vourable to the exercise of Christian 
graces, than the ordinary average of life. 
On the whole, I believe that the truly 
religious man would find himself, as it 
respected his power over besetting sins, 
his superiority to habitual infirmities, his 
liability to harassing temptations — much 
in his usual state. He would, it is nr 
firm persuasion, be as assailable by pro- 
vocations to trifling impatience and petty 
irritations, by the intrusion of forbidden 
thoughts, by dulness in religious duties, 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 97 

and wandering in his prayers, as though 
he had fair reason to expect long years of 
continuance here below. And why ? 
Because sinner though he was, before the 
summons of death arrived, (" for there is 
no man that sinneth not/') yet all false 
ways he utterly abhorred. His heart was 
right with God. His seed remained in 
him, and he could not sin presumptuously, 
deliberately, and against the law of love, 
because he was born of God. The law 
of his God was in his heart. And if at 
any time, through the infirmity of the 
flesh, his steps had slided, it was pain 
and grief to him, against the current of 
every feeling which he most fondly 
cherished. With such an one it is need- 
less to say, that the fear of death could 
not effect what the love of God had 
idled to do. But I am perhaps entering 
farther into this matter than my subject 
calls for, and shall return to the point 
from which I started. 

Another topic which the Christian 

F 



98 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

preacher should not cease to keep con- 
tinually before the hearer's mind, is this : 
that nothing can be lawfully undertaken 
or enjoyed, with which we cannot com- 
fortably associate the recollection, that 
" all things are naked and opened unto 
the eyes of Him with whom we have to 
do." " Thou, God, seest me," should be 
the language and the glad consent of 
every faithful soul ; should be to it the 
life of life, the spring of every consola- 
tion, and the sunshine of its being. To 
feel that to be for us, which mast be, whe- 
ther for us or against us ; to recognise 
and rejoice in that presence, from which 
no depths can hide, no distance can 
remove us ; to hail this as our security, 
our refuge, our rallying point, as the 
element in which we desire, and would 
choose, even were the option left us, to 
live and move and have our being; — 
this is the very substance of that con- 
formity of the will, and reconciliation of 
the nature, to the real and unchangeable 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 99 

constitution of things, in which it is 
clear and evident that the well-being or 
salvation of the soul must essentially 
consist. On the other hand, to feel 
instinctively, as we must do in all for- 
bidden courses, that God's ubiquity, that 
is, His existence, is against us : to seek 
a delusive refuge from the painful sense 
of encircling Deity, in a forgetfulness of 
ourselves and of Him that made us — 
w T hat is this but "to kick against the 
pricks" — to struggle against the currents 
of eternity and the tides of universal 
nature, and, like the fool, to say in our 
hearty however reason may disown the 
blasphemy, "There is no God?" This 
constant reference to the ever-watchful 
eye of God, should be the informing 
spirit of all we do, or say, or think. Nor 
does this, as some may erroneously 
imagine, imply a total absorption of the 
mind, as if the one object could alone 
employ it. Those who live habitually 
in the sense that God is present, are not 



100 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

always making Him the direct object or 
exclusive matter of their thoughts ; and 
yet He is never so wholly absent from 
their minds, as to cease from exercising 
an insensible influence over them. It 
is thus that, if we are travelling to any 
given place, we do not repeat over and 
over to ourselves, that we are to move in 
that direction. Nevertheless, we never 
so wholly lose sight of the point in view, 
as to turn aside to the right hand or to 
the left. So it is also with the expe- 
rienced courtier ; he feels quite at home, 
at ease, and in his element, while in 
attendance on his royal master. He is 
not, like the unpractised clown, so 
shackled, and embarrassed, and haunted 
by the thought that the prince is in the 
room, that he cares not how he may 
incommode, or push against, or trample 
on the feet of all others with whom he 
may come in contact ; and still there is, 
under these circumstances, though per- 
haps unadverted to, an instinctive and 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 101 

practical impression upon the mind of 
every well-bred man, which will as in- 
fallibly secure a becoming and suitable 
deportment as if a herald were contin- 
ually proclaiming the presence of the 
king. And thus it is with him who can 
with the Psalmist say, " I have set the 
Lord always before me : because he is 
at my right hand I shall not be moved." 
But there is a still more searching 
test, to which every voluntary pursuit 
and permitted pleasure should be put, 
than even the sense of an ever-present 
Deity ; namely, that at all times and 
in all places, we stand before that Being 
who was crucified for our sins. And if 
He be thus continually before us, "is 
there not a cause ?" Should the Christ- 
ian ever be unmindful of a Saviour's 
sufferings ? Should he be of one heart 
and mind with the thoughtless and un- 
feeling throng, to whom that Saviour 
thus speaks, and speaks, alas! in vain, 
"Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass 



102 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

by? behold, and see if there be any 
sorrow like unto my sorrow?" Should 
not the language of the Psalmist ever 
flow from the abundance of his heart, 
"If I forget thee, let my right hand 
forget her cunning. If I do not remem- 
ber thee, let my tongue cleave to the 
roof of my mouth?" What St Paul 
resolved, as respected his ministry at 
Corinth, he extends to the whole circle 
of his conversation. He is " determined 
not to know anything save Jesus Christ, 
and him crucified." Whatsoever is not 
of faith in Him he accounts as sin ; he 
esteems as polluted and forbidden every 
thing which has not some savour of His 
name, or, at least, whatever is calculated 
for a moment to shade off the cross 
from the vision of the soul. '.' God 
forbid that I should glory save in the 
cross of our Lord Jesus Christ," is his 
spontaneous answer to the wiles of the 
tempter, and the allurements of the 
world. His firm resolve and fervent 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 103 

prayers are, that in his experience that 
scene of sorrow may never be reacted, 
when "the Lord looked upon Peter," 
and when Peter, with bleeding heart and 
wounded conscience, went forth from His 
presence, and " wept bitterly." 

Nor let it be supposed, that if we 
"always remember the exceeding great 
love of our master and only Saviour, 
Jesus Christ, thus dying for us," such an 
habitual tendency of the mind will in- 
duce a life of gloom and melancholy. 
Far from it. The assimilative power of 
the cross, and the transformation of the 
soul into the image of Him who died 
thereon, is but our release from the 
bondage, and enfranchisement from the 
misery, of sin. It is to be buried by 
baptism into the Redeemer's death, "that 
like as Christ was raised up from the 
dead by the glory of the Father, even so 
we also should walk in newness of life ;" 
in the true liberty of the soul, in com- 
munion with God, and in the prospect 



104 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

of Heaven ; in ways of pleasantness and 
in paths of peace. If indeed our blessed 
master had not already passed through 
the cloud of His atoning sufferings ; if, 
like the three sorrowing Marys and the 
beloved disciple, we now " stood by the 
cross of Jesus," beheld the travail of His 
soul, and heard the voice of His com- 
plaint ; or if, as in the days of His flesh, 
those pangs were still before Him, and 
we saw the agonies that swelled His 
bosom when He looked to some for pity, 
and fled for sympathy to His disciples, 
saying, "My soul is exceeding sorrow- 
ful, even unto death;" — we might well 
"gird ourselves with sackcloth, and wal- 
low ourselves in ashes," and " go heavily 
as one that mourneth for his mother.' 5 
It was on this account, doubtless, a mer- 
ciful provision, that in the days of our 
Lord's humiliation, His disciples should 
have been so dull of hearing, when He 
forewarned them of His death and pas- 
sion, in terms both clear and unequi- 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 105 

vocal. " Behold we go up to Jerusalem, 
and all things that are written by the 
prophets concerning the Son of Man 
shall be accomplished. For he shall be 
delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be 
mocked, and spitefully entreated, and 
spitted on : and they shall scourge him, 
and put him to death : and the third day 
he shall rise again. And they under- 
stood none of these things, and this 
saying was hid from them ; neither knew 
they the things which were spoken." 
Had there not been some veil upon their 
minds, some merciful shield to protect 
their hearts, the prospect would have 
been insupportable ; the trial would have 
been "greater than they were able to 
bear ;" they would have been " swallowed 
up with over much sorrow," and unfitted 
to maintain the arduous post assigned 
them. But blessed be God, He who 
endured the cross and despised the 
shame, is now in full fruition of the joy 
that was set before Him. The dark 
f2 



106 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

cloud of His afflictions has passed away 
for ever, and He is now seated in the 
bright bosom of the felicity and glory 
which He had with His Eternal Father 
before the world was. It is thus that 
the mind of the believer is kept in that 
fine and equal balance which constitutes 
the Gospel the power of God unto salva- 
tion. While he rises with the risen 
Saviour, rejoices in His joy, and is 
victorious in His triumphs, still those 
Scriptures w r hich detail a Saviour's suffer- 
ings and sorrows, teach their lessons to 
his heart. He counts the cost and 
remembers the price at which he him- 
self was bought; he is conformed to 
that death by which his own everlasting 
life was purchased, and exclaims in the 
language of the apostle, u I am crucified 
with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not 
I, but Christ liveth in me : and the life 
w 7 hich I now live in the flesh I live by 
the faith of the Son of God, who loved 
me, and gave himself for me." A faithful 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS, 107 

setting forth of these affecting truths 
will cast a light upon the scenes of what 
are emphatically styled innocent amuse- 
ments, which, upon those who have eyes 
to see, will flash conviction of their utter 
contrariety to the spirit of the Christian 
life. 

Another test of the consistency of our 
pursuits with the nature of our holy 
calling is this, — are they, or are they not, 
calculated to vitiate those appetites of 
the soul which are, in other words, its 
capabilities of enjoying "the things 
which God has prepared for them that 
love him?" There are in man's original 
constitution a deep thirst for pleasure, 
and a lofty aspiration after glory ; and, 
upon the right or wrong direction of 
these potent tendencies his all depends. 
No man can serve two masters ; his 
affections cannot run with counter cur- 
rents. He cannot set his heart on two 
opposite and rival objects ; it must be 
infallibly the case, that if he love the one 



108 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

he will hate the other ; or if he volun- 
tarily cleave to the one he will despise 
the other. Let it then be fairly put to 
the understanding, and to the moral 
sense of those who crowd our churches, 
how far our seeking pleasure in the 
artificial and tumultuous gaieties of the 
world, can be accordant with that sim- 
plicity of taste which finds its enjoyment 
in the pure scenes of nature, and in the 
anticipation of those still purer scenes, 
of which nature itself is but the ruder 
draft or copy? Amidst the stimulants of 
the thronged assembly, do not even the 
flowers that pine and fade in its heated 
air and loaded atmosphere, often seem 
to say, that purity and innocence cannot 
find their congenial element there ? To 
many who are turning night into day, 
and day into night, can the thought but 
sometimes present itself, that, however 
vigilantly excluded, the morning light 
has already begun to dawn ; that now 
"man goeth forth unto his work and 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 109 

to his labour ;" that the plants are now 
opening to the sun ; that the birds are 
now unconsciously celebrating their Cre- 
ator's praise ; and that the saints are now 
offering up the incense of their earliest 
prayer to God? Surely these contrasts 
cannot but suggest, that there is some- 
thing in these hackneyed pleasures calcu- 
lated to spoil the taste for simple scenes 
and innocent delights. And if these 
high-seasoned ingredients of man's world 
jar against the purer elements of God's 
world here below, how still more essen- 
tially are they at variance with the 
sanctity of God's world above, and w r ith 
the pleasures which are at His right 
hand for evermore ! Assuredly the per- 
son who, in the crowded ball-room or 
theatre, to which he has voluntarily and 
for his own gratification resorted, can 
with complacency call to mind that 
solemn declaration, " Except ye be con- 
verted, and become as little children, ye 
shall in no case enter into the kingdom of 



110 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

heaven/' must be either strangely con- 
structed, or the victim of a most fatal 
self-deception. And if the entrance upon 
the state of blessedness requires a mind 
and moral taste wholly opposed to the 
love of worldly pleasures, how propor- 
tionately contrasted with them must be 
the pursuits and enjoyments of the saints 
in light! Can the whole compass of 
creation, or the powers of imagination 
present extremes more distant than the 
carnal delights and maddening excite- 
ments of fashionable dissipation, and the 
sketches which the Scriptures give of 
the rest that remaineth to the people of 
God ; of scenes " so cool, so calm, so 
bright," as are presented to the mind in 
the following passages ? " To-day," says 
the Great Shepherd to His returning 
sheep, " shalt thou be with me in 
paradise," — that is, in a garden of ever- 
during fruits, and never-withering flowers, 
the celestial counterpart of that retreat 
to which the wise, and innocent, and 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. Ill 

pure in heart betake themselves, as the 
solace of their cares, and their refresh- 
ment from all the toils of earth. *■* To 
him that overcometh," declares the faith- 
ful witness, "will I give to eat of the 
tree of life, which is in the midst of the 
paradise of God." Of those who " have 
washed their robes, and made them 
white in the blood of the Lamb," it is 
moreover said, " They shall hunger no 
more, neither thirst any more, neither 
shall the sun light on them, nor any 
heat ; for the Lamb which is in the 
midst of the throne shall feed them, 
and shall lead them unto living fountains 
of waters : and God shall wipe away all 
tears from their eyes." Let these bright 
draughts of unalloyed enjoyment be 
placed before the lovers of vain and 
sensual indulgences, and let them make 
the option for themselves. 

But I said before, man is not athirst 
for pleasure alone ; he is endowed with 
an insatiable ambition and appetite for 



112 ON PUBLIC AxMUSEMENTS. 

glory. To meet these aspirations, and 
to arrest them in their progress to the 
only fountain of the true sublime, the 
tempter offers all the false and dazzling 
brilliancies with which this present scene 
of things abounds. To our Saviour he 
promised all the kingdoms of the world, 
and the glory of them, vainly endeavour- 
ing to eclipse therewith the greater light 
which rules the eternal day. And, in our 
lower sphere, it is my deliberate convic- 
tion, that part, nay, the chief part of the 
danger of artificial gaieties is, that they 
meet the instinctive calls for glory, 
honour, and immortality, with mere ap- 
pearances, which mock the appetite, 
which vitiate the taste, and indispose it for 
the enjoyment of its connatural food. 
There is an almost magical effect pro- 
duced by splendid dresses, high-sounding 
titles, dazzling lights, brilliant airs; by 
the 6clat of scenic exhibitions ; by all the 
witcheries of the drama, and mysterious 
fascinations of the stage ; which intoxi- 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 1 13 

cates the mind, and deadens the principle 
of spiritual life within it. They take the 
soul out of the regions of reality and 
truth, wrap it in a false elysium, inflate it 
with a vain sense of glory, and present to 
it an idol as the object of its worship. 
That such is the dangerous delusion of 
these pursuits, nature itself could testify. 
Let us suppose at some long-protracted 
festivity, that in all the magnificence of 
its splendour and madness of its carou- 
sals, the windows were at once thrown 
open, and the morning sun were to ap- 
pear, casting his bright beams of light 
upon the clouds, and awakening the land- 
scape into life. Could a hand-writing 
upon the wall proclaim, in characters 
more clear and legible, to all this pa- 
geantry — "Thou art weighed in the 
balances, and art found wanting ?" And 
if, when God's material image arises, 
" his enemies are scattered, and those 
that hate him flee before him," what 
must be the contrariety of those scenes 



114 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

which are " filled with shame for glory" 
to Him before whom the sun itself is 
darkness, and beside whom there is no 
God ! But I shall enlarge upon this 
point no more. It carries, indeed, its 
own evidence with it. 

I shall conclude this letter by saying, 
that truths like these skilfully managed 
and applied with tact and with a judicious 
hand, would be competent to effect all 
that the pulpit can, or ought to do, in 
stemming the tide of vain and frivolous 
amusements. These topics would, in my 
opinion, have most influence when they 
were so unfolded as to lead persons to 
form for themselves those contrasts to 
which I have just now adverted. They 
should be urged in such a manner as to 
direct the attention to things and not to 
names. The principles should be so in- 
fused, as to reach the part diseased, by 
its alterative effect upon the general 
habit, and not by topical applications or 
partial remedies. In plain terms, I 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 115 

would not talk of balls, or theatres, or 
assemblies, however anxiously I might 
desire really and effectually to raise all 
hearts above them, and to call God's 
people out of them. But if I were to 
speak of these things by name, I would 
take care so to do it, as to shew that my 
charges were levelled against the love of 
them, rather than against the mere fre- 
quenting them. And still this distinction 
should be guarded with much caution, lest 
it might open a wide door to those who 
could readily feign to themselves some 
peculiar necessity, or convenient duty, 
which would bring their case within the 
limits of the preacher's license. In a 
word, to exhibit to the mind those bright 
scenes which the pen of inspiration draws ; 
to display those overwhelming contrasts 
to grovelling pleasures and empty vanities 
which the Scripture paints ; its green 
pastures ; its waters springing up into 
everlasting life ; its royal diadems and 
crowns of glory ; — these are the instru- 



116 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 

ments most potent in themselves, and 
most likely to be blessed of God, by 
which the pulpit will bear with power 
upon the matter under consideration, 
namely, the amusements of the world. 
Such a mode of preaching will be the 
most effectual means of extricating those, 
who have ears to hear, from a conformity 
to practices unsuitable to their general 
habits, and injurious to the health and 
well-being of their souls. By not attack- 
ing in one indiscriminate mass all who 
frequent the scenes of public gaiety, it 
will not wound the feelings of those who 
attend them by a forced compliance, 
" nor make the heart of the righteous 
sad, whom the Lord hath not made sad." 
And, as it respects the world, and those 
who are of the world, the preacher will 
not in such addresses, as it were, "judge 
them who are without ; * he will not aim 
at controlling those whom it would be a 
hopeless effort to control, or who, if 
restrained by such motives as could 



ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 117 

influence a worldly mind, would be 
nothing bettered by a partial, unsuitable, 
and unnatural restraint. He will not, 
finally, attempt, even were it possible to 
succeed, by banishing the lighter amuse- 
ments to create a void in society at large, 
or in the hearts of those individuals who 
generally compose it, which, in all likeli- 
hood, nothing but the grosser elements 
of sin would occupy. 

I am, &c. &c. 

H. W. 



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